


the smell of her perfume on your clothes

by Raiden (Lassasymphonie)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Estrangement, F/M, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, References to Depression, Romance, Sad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 05:34:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5615752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lassasymphonie/pseuds/Raiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"You will be alone always and then you will die." (Richard Siken, Litany In Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out)</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	the smell of her perfume on your clothes

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t know where this came from. I don’t know how this happened. I honestly didn’t see it coming.  
>  ~~oh my god what have I done~~
> 
> **P.S.:** Possible/probable ooc-ness below, which I’m not really worried about. All mistakes are mine. I hope you enjoy :D  
>  **P.S.:²** ~~Richard Siken is god.~~ The characters aren't mine. Though you probably know that.

 

> Every morning the maple leaves.
> 
>                                Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts
> 
>             from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big
> 
> and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out
> 
> _You will be alone always and then you will die._
> 
> So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog
> 
>          of non-definitive acts,
> 
> something other than the desperation.
> 
>                    Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I couldn’t come to your party.
> 
> Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I came to your party
> 
>          and seduced you
> 
> and left you bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.
> 
>                                                          You want a better story. Who wouldn’t?
> 
> _(Richard Siken, Litany In Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out)_

 

 

They met back in high school. Sai was fifteen when he first spotted her — pale golden hair, dark purple clothes, lips painted a soft tone of pink —, and it was a time where nothing seemed to matter at all. Maybe she had caught his eyes, her laugh loud and blue eyes sparkling, but he barely cared about her at all — he barely cared about anything, to be honest, and not because he didn’t want to, more like he didn’t know _how_ to. He is different than most of people his age now, and he was even more different back then, the natural knowledge of feelings not coming so easy, emotionally stunted being an adjective almost soft to describe him. She had seemed interested, at first, with him being the new student and carrying a scarily similar apparence to an ex-student that was part of her circle of friends — and if he had known that being Uchiha Sasuke’s shadow would start to haunt him later in life, Sai would’ve done something to stop it, probably, or maybe not, because in the end these similarities were what ended up making a loud-spoken, over-exaggerated blonde boy named Naruto start talking to him, which implied his own group of friends did, and if Sai has any friends at all this day, it’s all because of him —, but it was nothing but a fling: his aparent lack of interest related to friends or even acquietances was quick to make most of people give up on trying — again, being the shadow of Uchiha Sasuke, except for the part where Sasuke was still mostly well-liked while the general opinion about Sai was either that he was too weird, or that he didn’t deserve their attention, anyway.

It’s not until he’s sixteen that they actually uphold a conversation — by then, Sai thinks he can be already considered Naruto’s friend, or at least partially, and he’s a bit better at talking to people than he was before. Not that it matters too much, when the words “I think you’re beautiful” only serve to make Ino angry and humiliated, thinking he’s making fun of her for the whole ruckus that ended up with her being just a supporting role at the play _she_ helped creating — the fact that her clothes at the time had been her play clothes, which were nothing short of _atrocious_ , may have helped. So she screams at him to leave her alone, to fuck off, and Sai is honestly confused as to why she’s so mad when he isn’t even _lying_ — the concept seems so much like something useless to him. But he doesn’t tell her that because if anything, Naruto’s closeness with Sakura has shown him that when people are angry, the best thing to do is to let them calm down before trying to be reasonable.

So here’s what he does: he sits by her side at the last step of the stairs that lead to their classroom, and he lets her spill out all her rage, until the part where she starts to choke on her words, eyes red and tears running down her face. He lets her cry all that she wants to cry, sobbing out secrets and words and how _excited_ she was to finally achieve something she’s always wanted to do, and Sai doesn’t _understand_ her, not really, because he’s never had his dream taken away from his hands the way hers apparently was.

When she stops — and she eventually does, shoulders no longer shaking, no longer looking as if there’s some kind of pressure on her chest, over the place where her heart is —, Sai gives her his best smile, the one that doesn’t forcefully stretch out his face muscles — because Naruto has complained a lot of times that he looks _fake_ when he smiles the other way.

“I still think you’re beautiful”, he tells her, quietly.

It starts from there, really.

 

 

(the reason he wanted to tell her that in the first place had been because he had seen how much she looked upset when she didn’t get the main role — he had read somewhere that compliments may cheer up people, and that was what he had tried to do after watching the first rehearsal, because he honestly thought she looked beautiful, even if in old, ragged, ugly clothes that did nothing to flatter her — Ino had something about her eyes, some kind of spark, that showed him how _passionate_ she was about what she did; that, at least, was something he could truthfuly say he liked about her — it was the same way Shin would look at his drawings when he traced the lines, over and over and over again until the ink spoke for him)

 

 

Their first date is a disastrous one. It’s been a year since the encounter on the stairwell, and it had been Ino’s idea, but it turned out not being a good one — it’s raining as if the world is ending, and both of them are drenched to the bone. Sai has lost a shoe somewhere back on the way to the theatre, when his feet got stuck in a hole in the middle of the street and they couldn’t give themselves the luxury of stopping to retrieve it. Ino’s make up is ruined, and so is her hair, the golden locks falling all over her face, darker now that they’re wet. It’s cold now, but the day had started with a hot kind of weather and none of them had thought about bringing a jacket or anything else — Sai has nothing to offer, short of his own shirt, so Ino won’t be stuck with only her white top, freezing to death; he tried, but she gave him a resolute “no” along with a very reasonable argument that shirtless, the one dying from hypothermia would be _him_ , and that was it.

They have nowhere to go — it’s late, they’re too far from the shop center where most of things would be open, and no cab can be seen anywhere near — and nothing to do except to wait under a roofing of the gates from an old house where an old lady was kind enough to let them stay, motioning for them to come closer, though she couldn’t go all the way down her monstrous garden and under the storm so they could enter her house. Ino’s teeth are clattering, and Sai is stuck between hesitant and anxious, his hands trembling on its own, almost reaching out a lot of times before he gives up and makes them stay put where they are.

In the end, Ino is the one to take action instead of him, her arms closing around his middle section in a sudden movement, and she hides her face in his chest, shivers running up and down her body. Sai is startled for a second, brain short-circuiting, before he hugs her back, hands resting over her hips.

“This is the worst date ever”, she mumbles quietly to him, but there’s a tinge of amusement under her words, as if this is, in fact, a funny situation to be in.

“Agreed”, Sai mumbles back, far less amused, but he also can’t stop the tiny twirl that his lips make, curling slightly upwards.

Next time, he decides, next time they’re just going to borrow a few movies from someone, and watch it at home.

 

 

(Ino kisses him three days later when they’re doing a Star Wars maratone at his house, her lips red and tasting like lipstick, her arms around his neck — and at first he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, whether he should leave them resting over his torso, but then she starts to move away and he knows he doesn’t _want_ her to — so his hands reach up to cup her face, softly, holding her with as much as care as he can muster, his lips moving softly while he tries to mimick the easiness of her movements — “Was this your first kiss?”, she’ll ask him later, and then procceed to laugh softly and tackle him with a bone crushing hug when he blushes — Sai will dream of touching her hair that night, the smell of her perfume still stuck on his skin, the ghost of her lips on his own)

 

 

When they part ways at the end of high school, Ino is worried it might be the end — not only _their_ end, but the end of a lot of the friendships they think they’ve gathered along these three years. Reality, she knows, isn’t as sweet as most of people like to think, and it’s sad to realize you thought you were friends with someone just to realize they were only your friend because you saw each other every day.

Sai isn’t really worried. Not _much_ , at least — he would be lying if he said there’s not a part of him that _churns_ and _cringes_ at the mere thought of losing anyone from the weird group of people he’s learned to care for. Still, he looks at the girl he calls his _girlfriend_ , and her soft, silk-like skin, her long lashes, the way her hand fits inside of his own, and how _beautiful_ she looks when she smiles, eyes curving to half-moons, her whole face lighting up in happiness, and then — then there’s this feeling inside his chest, his heart _fluttering_ , and Sai wants to kiss her, and he wants to hold her, he wants to rest his head on her shoulder and _never leave_ — and he knows there’s no way this could possibly end. He doesn’t see himself falling out of love with this girl.

As for the friends he’s acquired since that first year — Sai is not so sure. He’s not _keen_ on the idea of losing any of them, not after so much time and so much effort spent on trying and learning about socializing just so he wouldn’t be a stranger. He genuinely _likes_ them, but he knows he’s never been exactly the closest person to any of them — so of course it comes off as a surprise when not most, but _all_ of them make him promise he’ll keep in contact.

Sai makes a thing out of not breaking his promises — it must be Naruto’s influence.

 

 

(the first weeks are the harder ones — he slips into a routine of calling Ino and his friends whenever he can, even if it’s only to ask about their days — and one day, late at night, Ino falls asleep while they’re talking and he doesn’t try and wake her up, he keeps quiet and he listens to her breathing — and he feels lonely, so much, curling up in his bed and clutching to his blankets, he barely remembers how it felt before — when she was so close, her hand resting over his chest, the sound of her laugh echoing inside his head, filling his chest with warmth)

 

 

Their first serious fight is not a good one. They have had fights before, a lot of them, because Sai’s social awkwardness would get in the way, or Ino’s temper, but things would always turn out okay in the end.

This time, this time Sai is not so sure. It was bad, really bad — but he can’t even make himself remember why they started fighting to begin with. It had been something to do with how much time he took to call Ino, or maybe how she never sounds happy through the cell phone, or maybe even something about how none of them are really good at talking through Skype. It could’ve been anything — everything —, and now… Now Sai’s not sure what to do with himself.

He had been angry when she started shouting — angrier than he’d ever been, and confused, and sad, and lonely. And he _knew_ she was hurting, too, but he couldn’t stop himself from telling her, from spilling out all the reasons why _he_ thought _she_ didn’t care about what they had anymore. Yet, when she said to him, “I think we should take some time”, very quietly, very calmly, it all disappeared — he remembers it like being hit in the face with cold water, freezing mid-walking through his bedroom.

And then he’d sputtered — asked her to stay, no, _begged her_ , to give him a second chance, to— but Ino only whispered “I’m sorry, Sai”, before the line shut down, and that had been it.

That had been it.

And here is Sai, trapped between a hundred different persons, squashed into one of the subway uncomfortable seats, with his hands empty and his heart heavy. He probably should’ve thought about something to say, should’ve bought something — but he didn’t and he has nothing to offer, nothing he can possibly say that will fix this in any way.

But yet, he still goes — he goes to her place with shaking shoulders and trembling lips, and when she opnes the door, her face is still full of tear tracks, her eyes red and swelled up from crying; his heart sinks. She stares at him in shock, and Sai shuffles his feet anxiously, his heartrate going crazy. His mouth is dry, there’s a lump in his throat, and it’s suddenly hard to speak, to let her know, to explain why he can’t, can’t, why— still, somehow he manages to sob to her through the stinging in his eyes and the cotton-like feeling on his tongue:

“I need you. Please.”

 

(“let me stay”, he doesn’t beg, but Ino pulls him inside anyway, her hands quivering, and her lips over on his own, the taste of salt on her tongue — “I love you, I love you, I love you”, he’ll whisper to her later, his face hidden at the crook of her neck, the words tumbling their way up his throat — “Please don’t leave me” — and she’ll hold him thightly — “I promise you”, with her voice wavering, lips trembling, shoulder shaking)

 

 

Sai bought the ring months ago. It’s not a big ring, full of diamonds and shiny jewels — he’s still an art student, and working on a bookstore can only give him so much money, after all —, but it’s delicate, and beautiful, and it reminds him of Ino.

Because he wants to do it right, he not only asks Yamanaka Inoichi’s blessing to marry his daughter — he talks to their friends, too, in hope they can advice him on what can be the best moment to tell her. Ino’s father is worried they might be too young for such a commitment, and though their friends support them, Sai knows they, also, think that this is a huge step, that maybe they should wait a little more.

Sai is twenty-two. He’s in love. He doesn’t want to wait — he doesn’t want to get through years more of sitting alone by his kitchen and missing Ino so much, it’s like there’s a hole in his chest. He knows what he wants, and he’s sure of it. So one day, after weeks of not seeing each other, he invites her out on a date. He has it all planned carefully, every step, every moment, so to make the moment as perfect as he thinks Ino deserves — which means the world goes out of its way to make sure nothing goes as he wanted it to go.

Yet, Sai doesn’t change his mind. He’s never even been really good at telling people how he feels — which means that there’s no planned speech which he rehearsed a thousand times in front of a mirror. He can’t _explain_ to Ino how he feels, he can only try and show her how important she is to him, and how _happy_ he is that he can make her smile, that he can hold her hand, that he can be the one she chose to stay with.

 

(he doesn’t get to take the ring out of his pocket to offer to her — the moment he falls to his knee, and she realizes the question starting to form on his mouth, Ino’s arms close around him, tears in her eyes, a laugh bubbling up through her throat — “Is this a yes?”, he’ll ask her, timidly, his heartbeat erratic, and she’ll kiss him, still laughing, still smiling — “Yes, yes, yes!” — and that, right there, will be the moment Sai will regard as being the happiest moment of his life)

 

(in three more months, they’ll be searching for an apartment together)

 

 

The ceremony isn’t a big one. It’s realized at the back of Ino’s house, the garden in which she used to play when she was a kid, and there are a lot of flowers all over the place. The girls and Inoichi took it as their quest to garnish the place, to make it look as perfect as one could possibly be — and Sai had tried to help, briefly, before everyone came to the conclusion that _fashion_ wasn’t something he knew anything about; so Tenten had cast him aside, called Neji, and demanded the boys the come pick him up for him to choose his suit.

The clothing — well, hadn’t that been a nightmare. Sai had almost seen Ino’s dress three times — Sakura had hit him all the three, telling something among the lines of _didn’t he know it was badluck for the groom to see the bride on the dress before the ceremony_ —, and he couldn’t find a good suit for his life. In the end, though, with Shino’s help — and who would’ve thought he had an amazing taste when it came to formal clothing —, they managed it all.

So here are them, now: Sai at the altar, staring as the most beautiful woman in the world walks to him, hand in hand with her father. He can’t think of anywhere else he would rather be. Ino looks radiant.

Sakura and Naruto cry the whole time.

 

(and when he kisses her, he kisses her with all her heart, trying to get through his lips all the emotion that’s bubbling up inside of him, all the _happiness_ , the _love_ , all the _joy_ because she’s his _wife_ now)

 

It’s easy at the beginning. They fall into routine, an easy routine that settles them down in a way Sai hadn’t thought possible before. He wakes up every day to find Ino resting with her head over his chest, her eyes closed, hair sprawled at her back, her hand with fingers interlaced with his own. It’s like falling in love over and over again, every morning as she stirs and yawns and stretches, and then rises her irises to stare at him and _smile_ , still barely awake — and Sai always smiles back, his heart fluttering with warmth.

They go out on dates, from time to time. It’s not the same, not like they did before, but then, nothing is. It doesn’t matter too much, not when both of them prefer to watch things at home, anyway, cuddled together on the sofa.

It’s — good.

 

(until the day it isn’t)

 

Sai doesn’t like keeping track of how much they fight. Not because he would rather forget — he knows arguing over things on their relationship is supposed to strenghten their bond, since they will actually _talk_ about what bothers them instead of simply bottling it all up —, but because they don’t fight that much, to start with.

At least, they didn’t. It’s not big things they talk about — it’s not about how Sai still has trouble turning most of his emotions into words or actions, it’s not about how Ino sometimes doesn’t have the patience to deal with him, it’s not about how they will feel _suffocated_ sometimes from all the time they spend together, under the oppressive weight of expectations not reached from the lfie as a married couple or dreams not yet accomplished —, it’s only the little things they fight about — how Sai will let his art supplies here and there, and how Ino will take most of space on the cabinet from the bathroom with her beauty products, how Sai will always clean up most of the house but utterly refuse to do anything related with cleaning up the kitchen, how Ino is tired of doing all the shopping for herself with her barely enough pay from the job at the museum, how she can’t cook to save their lifes and Sai is tired of eating takeouts and his job, now at a restaurant, doesn’t pay him enough for them to go on restaurants so often, and how they can’t keep relying on Ino’s father to help them pay the rent because they’re _married_ now, they were supposed to do this together, they were supposed to have _planned this_ — they were supposed to known better.

They don’t talk about most of things, to be honest. Not about Sai’s family, which he would rather not to, anyway, and not about how Ino and Sakura are growing apart this days, despite how much the blonde cherishes their friendship. Not about Sai’s constant silence and not about the way Ino’s eyes slowly start to lose their spark. Not about how they will still sleep on the same bed, but not together, not close like they used to — how they will turn their backs on each other and ask themselves, quietly, how it came to this.

It only makes sense, then, that they start growing apart. It only makes sense that Sai starts locking himself on the tiny room he uses as his atelier, and Ino starts getting restless, desperate to be anywhere but their apartment. It only makes sense that she starts going out and staying everywhere else all the time she can, and Sai stops searching for her.

It only makes sense.

 

(it only makes sense that he stops smiling altogether, that Ino doesn’t laugh anymore, that they barely kiss and barely hug and barely touch — that they start feeling _uncomfortable_ when they’re too close, eager to get away)

 

 

The saddest thing, then, it’s not the fact that none of them know where they went wrong, where they missteped so everything they had started to get lost. It’s not the fact that Ino doesn’t see any other way out of this, or that Sai misses the old times, only he has no idea how to make this right — none of them have. The saddest thing is that when Ino looks at him with her eyes red and puffy from crying, her lips a resolute line, and says “I want a divorce”, Sai can’t bring himself to feel anything.

“Okay”, it’s what he says back to her, because it’s the only thing he can make himself to do.

 

(she doesn’t slap him for his detached answer like one would think she would, because there is no passion, no anger, no fire burning inside her anymore when it comes to him — just as quietly as he answered, she stands up, picks her purse and leaves — nothing more is said because there’s nothing any of them could possibly try and put into words that will make this better — and even as the sound of the closing door echoes through the apartment where they’ve lived together for the last three years, Sai can only stay and stare at the empty spot that was left behind — the empty spot on the sofa, the house, and inside of him)

 

**Author's Note:**

>  ~~I’m so proud of it, I can’t even~~ I don’t know.


End file.
